A broadband wireless communication network to be used in a metropolitan area may use an access scheme based on the IEEE 802.16e Standard also known in the art as WiMAX. In such a broadband wireless communication network, the medium access scheme may employ an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system and/or a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems.
The broadband wireless communication network may include at least one base station and a plurality of mobile stations. The base station may be responsible for scheduling data transmissions to the plurality of mobile stations and scheduling uplink transmissions from the mobile stations. The scheduling algorithm may assign wireless broadband network resources to different mobile stations of the network. In conjunction with the assignment of a resource to a mobile station, modulation and coding rates which may be used over the assigned resource may be determined.
In some wireless networks that employ TDMA the resources may be discriminated by time of transmission. In some other wireless networks that employ OFDM and/or Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) and/or TDMA the resources may be discriminated by both time and frequency.
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